In the related art, it is common as a method for forming external electrodes of a ceramic electronic component to apply an electrode paste to both end surfaces of a sintered ceramic body, bake the paste to form base electrodes, and then form upper layer electrodes on the base electrodes by plating. However, this method has a problem of complicating the manufacturing steps and causing the cost increase, because the step of applying a paste and the heating step associated with the baking are necessary for the formation of the base electrodes.
Further, the method has a problem of an applied shape limited in applying a conductive paste in the formation of the base electrodes. For example, in the case of forming a conductive paste by a dip method at both ends of a ceramic body having a rectangular parallelepiped shape, the conductive paste is applied to not only both of the end surfaces of the ceramic body, but also four side surfaces adjacent to both of the end surfaces so as to wrap around the side surfaces. Therefore, finally formed external electrodes have shapes extending to both of the end surfaces and the four side surfaces adjacent to the end surfaces.
In place of such a method for forming electrodes in the related art, there is proposed a method for forming external electrodes just by plating (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-40084). According to this method, a plurality of ends of internal electrodes is exposed on an end surface of a ceramic body with the ends in proximity to each other, dummy terminals referred to as anchor tabs are exposed in proximity on the same end surface as the ends of the internal electrodes, and the ceramic body is subjected to electroless plating to cause plated metals to grow with the ends of the internal electrodes and the anchor tabs as nuclei, thereby forming external electrodes.
However, according to this method, the ends of the plurality of internal electrodes and the anchor tabs have to be exposed in proximity in an external electrode formation part of the ceramic body, thus resulting in a disadvantage of complicating the manufacturing steps and of causing the cost increase. In addition, the surface on which the plated metals are formed is limited to the surface on which the ends of the internal electrodes and the anchor tabs are exposed, and thus it is not possible to form an external electrode on any part.
On the other hand, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Nos. 2000-223342, 2000-243629, and 11-176685 each disclose forming an electrode over the entire surface of ferrite constituting an inductor, and then burning off the electrode through laser irradiation, thereby forming a coil pattern. In that regard, these documents disclose the fact that heat of the laser spreads to not only the electrode but also the ferrite thereunder, thereby changing some of the ferrite properties to a conducting property or a lower resistance (see paragraph 0005 in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2000-223342, paragraph 0004 in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2000-243629, and paragraph 0005 in Japanese Patent Application Laid-5 No. 11-176685). However, these documents disclose only burning off the electrode through the laser irradiation, and in addition, describe the fact that the heat of the laser adversely affects characteristics as an inductor.